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I suck in a breath. It’s like listening to my father speak or scold me at the dinner table. Always psychoanalyzing. It’s like he couldn’t help himself.

Bikiniqueen: You seem to know a whole heck of a lot about our class.

Lincoln kept staring at me today, like he recognized me… Would he message me like this?

SF: I read ahead. I like to understand what I’m getting into.

I shake my head. “So stupid,” I mutter to myself. Why would a guy as established as Lincoln want to play some prank on me? It makes no sense.

SF: So will you answer my question?

I bite my bottom lip and smile, typing back a response.

Bikiniqueen: What question?

SF: Will you study with me?

Bikiniqueen: I think I’ll pass.

A few seconds go by before he or she finally says,

SF: Have a good night, Summer.

Their circle turns gray, indicating they’ve logged off, and I slam my computer shut, shaking my head. I turn off my bedside light and curl up in a ball, trying to calm my senses. Every nerve in my body is fired up. This school, this town, this obsession with masked men…

Officially. Fucking. Creepy.

All I can think about is some psycho wearing a potato sack mask, fantasizing about me in my bed. Worst of all, I am so sexually frustrated right now that a pulse hits between my legs again. I have to admit, for the first time since that night, I’m really fucking turned on.

CHAPTER

THREE

SUMMER

The Order of the Shadows.

“I don’t know much about them, only that they killed lots of people,” Dani says as we walk through the well-manicured pathways that meander around old Gothic sandstone buildings that make up the fabric of Kinsmen University. A campus as old as the trees. The trees must keep all this town’s secrets, given how old they are.

I am already familiar with the Order of the Shadows, as is everyone else. However, their true identity remains a mystery. All we know is that they used to live here.

Rumors, stories, myths of monsters.

A secret society—so secret, it’s as if they don’t exist anymore.

Dani loves this kind of thing, and I’m curious about it, so I asked her about them.

“What happened to the Order? Do they still exist?” I ask as I run my gaze up to a heavy mist in the sky starting to break as the sun begins to peek through. I guess the sun doesn’t like to shine in a place like this, as if it knows evil resides here.

We head toward a break in the trees, and sit side by side on our jackets on the lush lawn and sip our coffees.

Dani continues, “They disappeared without a trace. No more pranks, no more whispers. They went from wanting everyone to know they were here to utter silence.”

I stretch my legs out in front of me while staring up at the canopy and get lost in its beauty of the fall colors I can finally see through the mist. “What kind of pranks?” Admittedly, I’ve not heard much about them.

She arches a well-manicured brow and smiles. She’s so into this lore. I’ve not seen her this interested in something for a long time. Ever since her father’s conviction, she lives on the edge.

“Well, in the seventies, they used to wreak havoc on campus—burning buildings down, lacing drinks with acid at parties. The more word spread about their movement, the more people panicked. But it remained a mystery who exactly was in charge or what their purpose was—that was always a secret. They used to spray paint the name Shadowface on the quad. That name has been in this town a long time; it was always used to scare people here, like he was a boogie man or something. But it’s the name of the god they worshipped. Then the slaughter of 1979 happened, and everything changed. They went quiet.” She means the mass, chaotic killing spree that took the lives of seven people at a campus party in the woods.